PG&E hires a new CEO from… TVA?

Advocates say the choice of hiring a CEO from a power company openly hostile to renewables is a bad look for the bankrupt utility, and comes as CCAs are organizing for a greater role in the state’s power system.

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Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) is at the center of the energy transition in the United States. Not only does California have one of the nation’s most aggressive mandates to decarbonize, but a combination of the state’s community choice aggregator (CCA) movement and the wildfires that have ravaged Northern California have put the utility in the crosshairs of changes in the utility business model.

This is not to say that PG&E is changing willingly; instead bankruptcy and a safety record including convictions related to the San Bruno gas disaster are forcing change. Adding to a plan to proactively de-energize power lines in areas and times of high fire danger, PG&E also pledged to reform its board as former CEO Geisha Williams stepped down in January.

Yesterday PG&E announced that it has chosen the leader of TVA, William Johnson, as its new CEO and President – along with the appointment of ten new directors as seven directors step down. The utility cites Johnson’s role in turning around TVA, including achieving the best safety record in the industry and the retirement of more than half of TVA’s coal-fired generation.

PG&E further claims that TVA has added roughly 1 GW of utility-scale solar in recent years, along with modernizing the utility’s hydroelectric assets.

Advocates not impressed

To solar advocates, the words TVA are not associated with leadership. After rumors emerged the Johnson would be PG&E’s choice, In March Vote Solar, Environment California and Earthjustice sent a joint letter to the utility’s interim CEO, calling on the utility to choose a leader who has a demonstrated commitment to not only safety, but “advancing California’s public policy priorities around climate and energy issues”.

While we need a renewable energy leader, TVA, under Bill Johnson’s leadership, is a renewable energy laggard. California is demanding 21st century solutions, and Mr Johnson’s resume is very much rooted in the past. After a history of deadly disasters, PG&E customers also deserve board leadership with a laser focus on the safety of our families and communities.

I’m concerned that these board and CEO decisions, which were promoted behind-the-scenes by a few New York hedge funds, keeps PG&E on a dangerous course track of continuing to place shareholder interests above the interests of the public that this utility is intended to serve. Californians deserve better.

Vote Solar estimates that TVA got only 3% of its power from wind and solar in 2018 – about 1/3 the national average. The organization also notes the power company’s moves to stop customer-sited distributed solar, an area in which TVA has been particularly brazen.

CCAs on the move

While PG&E has been under pressure to appoint new leadership, this may not be sufficient to stop the tide of change. And leading much of this change are California’s Community Choice Aggregators (CCAs), entities formed by local governments which have taken over procurement of electricity generation in much of PG&E’s service area with a mandate to decarbonize rapidly.

California’s CCAs have already called on the state to take away PG&E’s retail business and leave the utility to manage its transmission and distribution system. A day before PG&E announced Johnson as its choice, the trade group formed by CCAs launched its new Bright Energy Future coalition, under which it is seeking individual and organizational partners to advance its mission.

This mission includes “empowering local governments to develop and expand their role in providing electricity services, while supporting a range of community clean power choices” – in other words, more CCAs.

Unclear path forward

California regulators have expressed caution regarding the growth of CCAs, with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) warning last May that the state could “drift into another crisis” without a plan to manage the “dozens of different decisions and legislative actions” changing the power sector.

However, other concerns, such as those some have expressed to pv magazine over the ability of CCAs to serve as credit-worthy offtakers for large generators, may be overplayed. Last October Peninsula Clean Energy signed a power contract with a 200 MW solar project, and if anything it is PG&E – which has filed for bankruptcy twice in 20 years – that is looking financially unreliable.

It remains to be seen where things will move from here, with many actors – Governor Newsom, the state legislature and regulators – all expressing interest in weighing in. But as for PG&E, it appears that instead of embracing change, the utility is doubling down on its previous positions.

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Christian Roselund

Christian Roselund served as US editor at pv magazine from 2014 to 2019. Prior to this he covered global solar policy, markets and technology for Solar Server, and has written about renewable energy for CleanTechnica, German Energy Transition, Truthout, The Guardian (UK), and IEEE Spectrum.

Agree with you Christian… TVA is achieving its carbon reductions unwillingly… because it has and continues to cry “load growth is stagnant or declining” and sees/nor promotes electrification efforts – as not to upset local gas distribution companies.

That said… they are getting new generation from refurb/uprating of their NPPs. Browns’ Ferry has or is just finishing upgrades on its 3rd unit. All combined across the 3 units, about 500 MW new capacity. Watts Bar 2 came online what… 3 years ago (after of course 37 years to complete) 😀 And of course, some new CCGTs.

Still need to crack their locked down control of their 500kV system… if the east coast wants some Great Plains wind (and soon solar).

Agreed. And while I cheer the Watts Bar 2 coming online (more zero-carbon electricity), it took a long time and I don’t think new nuclear is something that is likely to be installed soon either by TVA or any other U.S. power company.

But here is an honest question… how has SEIA acted progressively/collaboratively with all of TVA’s captured electric EMCs? They have not, they have broad brushed and demonized them uniformly, just as bad as TVA itself, destruction of the Cooperative/EMC model is part and parcel with the destruction of the IOU model.

Sorry, SEIA is playing with 2-faces.

And California’s CCAs… what a f*cking joke. Accepting absolutely zero responsibility & risk, selling at best a “customer experience” improvement, and nothing more than a ESPCo – which we saw plenty ESPCs collapse in the UK last year while overall, there is lot of good news about the UK’s grid carbon intensity plummeting with or without the ESPCs.

How much is California’s CCA “experiment” going to cost and at what cost for marginal at best carbon/climate improvements?

Here’s a question: What evidence do you have that SEIA has “broad brushed and demonized” any utility in Tennessee? I haven’t seen the national SEIA make any statements about TVA’s member cooperatives at all – most of the opposition comes from SACE and sometimes Vote Solar.

Also I find your statement that “destruction of the cooperative/EMC model is part and parcel with the destruction of the IOU model” to both unsupported and unrelated to statements that SEIA has made. I haven’t seen SEIA stand up to the big utilities much at all – and I would welcome it if they did, because Cost of Service Regulation is a 20th century model that incentivizes utilities to build un-needed infrastructure and enriches utility shareholders at the expense of the rest of society.

But those are my views, not SEIA’s, so I think you are barking up the wrong tree.

As for California’s CCAs… please provide some documentation as to your claim about rates. I haven’t seen anything like what you are describing.

While we are at it, how much utility stock do you own, and what other business ties do you have to the utilities that you so faithfully support with your online arguments?

Maybe you “caught” me… not really going out of my way to find SEIA specific statements, but definitely this is the case with SACE… and Vote Solar is nothing more than a mouthpiece for SEIA.

Show me where SACE or Vote Solar or all their little minions can differentiate any levels within the word “utility”.

As for California’s CCA… I just got it direct from the horse’s mouth at California’s Community Choice Association, that CCA are NOT municipalizing the networks. So in other words, they are accepting exactly 0 risk, while whatever “benefits” they provide will be marginal at best. I’ll just link you to the discussion on LI.

Which Bahaman or Swiss account would you like to look in? I have… exactly 0 stocks in anything at all. Let me think… last paycheck indirectly/partially funded by oil companies… July 2014 (uggh… that includes all paychecks). So nothing from Big Oil, nor “Big Utility”, nor… coming from me, must be a “Big NG” – that too, no. Big Wind? Nope, but the local man-children & lunatics have charged me with that too in the press.

I did work in solar thermal some years ago…. when rooftop solar, “choice”, “democratization of energy”, and “savings” were just getting warmed up. Lived/worked outside Boulder for a while too (2 different times) while all along Boulder was wanting to municipalize Xcel local distribution grid…. Boulder never “won” and now look at what the biggest headline out of the industry was last year.

So, who do I support… at this time, big utilities getting sh*t done at scale as long as it keeps dropping our carbon intensity… as it is pretty clear individuals are not going to do it by themselves. So if a utility wants to make a little profit while leading the country in carbon emissions reductions … that is not going to bother me that much, because cue first point, humans on their own can be count on to reduce carbon emissions themselves…. well at least not those in the US.

Your statements about Vote Solar and SEIA suggest that you don’t know these organizations very well. I do, and while Vote Solar and SEIA may work together on issues, they are separate organizations with very different approaches to advocacy. As such your claim that Vote Solar is a mouthpiece for SEIA is patently bogus.

SACE is also a very different organization. Your lack of any real understanding of the world of solar advocates is showing, and as such you should probably avoid painting with a broad brush people you don’t know and situations that you don’t seem to understand.

As for municipalization: no, that’s not what CCAs do. In fact, they’ve openly proposed kicking PG&E out of retail specifically so that it can focus on the lines and wires part of the business, which they don’t seem to object to at all. So totally unclear what tree you are barking up here, except to serve as a faithful pro-utility voice in pv magazine USA’s comment section.

Clearly these poor utilities are disadvantaged here, with only ratepayer money to spend on PR and legal advocacy to protect their lucrative monopolies – often against these very ratepayers.

Wow, Christian… clearly you have no recognition of our common [recent] endeavors and challenges. Something, others within our industries, clearly do recognize, acknowledge and have the “brass cajones” to exhibit mutual respect through a school of hard knocks skeptism of any of the energy sectors. You think you know utilities? Where is your experience with them rooted – press releases and siloed industry specific mindsets? Did you every think that the same “mania” coming out of solar, batteries and/or microgrids is the exact same tunnel vision we read from other industries; such as nuclear, oil, coal or natural gas? We are looking for cross-energy sector collaborations here to solve the challenges that no single industry or sector can accomplish alone to tackle climate change (and the mess, you, me and largely every other American got us into) and do it most cost effectively as …. capital IS finite, and time and again, we see the individuals cannot do it on their own (if they honestly want to) or outright refuse to do.

With due respect, time to mature a little and step outside the niche you have [yes, through hard work and sacrifices] carve for yourself.

As soon as you can say you’ve received not one paycheck or dime over the past years for all your efforts & sacrifices, pushing hard for mutually beneficial collaborations across all the energy sector in locations all over the world, like I have… then you can question my motivations.

To be honest, I have extended oil branches to you to work collaboratively, with mutual benefits for each of us in the past… yet, they have fallen on death ears.

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